Doing Morocco on your own doesnt seem to present any major challenges. If your familiar with foreign customs etc and have previously travelled/driven abroad then you are most of the way there. I too feel like the commercial companies are taking the **** in the amount they charge to take people, i understand they also provide a service and an easy holiday, but dont people get enjoyiment from trawling maps and planning routes? is it just me?
main questions you need to ask yourself are:
how much time in Morocco do you want/have?
how much offroad/piste driving do you want to partake in?
allow yourself the best part of a week to travel to Morocco then the rest of the time can be spent incountry. the question of piste driving or not is a personel one and one which will eat up loads of your planning time and may even see you preparing your vehicle for longer. If you just want to stick to dusty roads and tarmac then not much planning is needed. I suggest obtaining a copy of michelin map 0742. Its a large scale map which shows the length of the country including western sahara. here you can plan your route and places you want to visit.
If you want to do some piste driving then i suggest getting a copy of Chris Scott's sahara overland. i think there are 12 routes in there all across Morocco, mainly concerntrated in the southeast/east of the country. If you have a Garmin GPS then Tracks4 africa are a good start:
Tracks4Africa - Mapping Africa, one day at a time if you have google earth, you can look at these for free
a free vector map can also be obtained from here:
GPS Vector Map Morocco
the 4x4 forums are absolute crap on this kind of info for various countries, most of the info is dated and hard to get out of people (dont know why) i found these guys really helpful and piste updates are regular:
Morocco and NW Africa - ::. UKGS'er.com .::
on the subject of navigation/GPS, waypoints for campsites etc. are here:
GPS waypoints
AfricaRevealed - GPS coordinates
Most of the info is out there, you just have to search long and hard depending on what you want to achieve.
Just make sure your vehicles are very well serviced and your cooling system is in top shape. Make sure you can get a green card from your insurance company. Make sure all your documents check out, your driving license address should be the same as the V5 AND insurance docs etc.
cant think of any other general info right now, if there is anything specific, just ask... although i may not know!
G
